Because you are, Sammy
by btch sprinkles
Summary: Sam/Castiel, series, deaf!Sam verse. Sam just doesn't understand why Castiel has a more profound bond with Dean. What does Dean have that Sam doesn't?


And here comes part 2 of the Deaf!Sam verse. Just a little ditty about Sam's course, not a lot of dialogue.

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There were a thousand reasons why Sam was with Ruby. A thousand reasons. He loved her. That could be one—though let's face it, Sam didn't love easily and loving a demon was stretching the boundaries of even _his_ twisted reality. He was addicted to the demon blood she was feeding him—and that's the one Dean and Bobby wanted to believe, and he was sort of addicted. Sort of. Sam would rather have Dean and Bobby believe that than the truth, because the truth was just… it wasn't something Sam was ready to share with Dean yet.

Ruby made Sam hear. Not like a hearing person, because nothing in the world could do that for Sam save for having those electrodes implanted into his brain which he didn't understand why anyone did that. No, it wasn't like that. It was like dancing to music and hearing the tinkling laughter that Sam only experienced through vibrations under the tips of his fingers.

It was something else, and it wasn't even her, really, but Sam wasn't sure even Ruby knew that much. It was a name she'd said once. Castiel. Before the Angel appeared, of course, but the name just hit him like a ton of bricks because he didn't know how to explain to her that he'd _heard_ the name before.

And the first time she said hers, and then his, he pretended to be shocked, because it should have been the first time Sam had ever heard anything—that's what Ruby had expected. Sam played the part, too, looking shocked and growing all teary-eyed, but mostly it was because he couldn't explain how he knew that it wasn't the first time. There was something lurking in the deep, dark recesses of his brain that he couldn't explain.

There was Dean, of course, who sort of just popped up out of the ground, fresh from Hell, looking like he'd been down there forty years. Of course Sam didn't know that it had, in fact, been forty years. Not right away, anyway. There was this bizarre hand print on Dean's shoulder and Sam just couldn't stop staring at it.

Dean's hands, open palms upward, and he gave them a little shake back and forth. 'What?' Though by Dean's expression he was really asking, 'What the hell are you staring at?'

An O shape shaken under his chin and then he sort of flung his fingers out lazily. 'Nothing.' He wasn't staring at anything, even when he was. He wanted to touch that hand print because he felt like it meant something. If he could touch it he could know, he could unlock whatever was hidden away in his head from sometime, ages ago, before their dad was dead and when their lives sucked just a fraction less.

And then came Castiel. In all of his human-vessel glory with his scratchy voice that Sam didn't have to hear to know had to be a strain on that poor human's vocal cords, and his waving trench coat and that look of perpetual constipation because Castiel didn't seem to understand anything in the human world.

But he could sign, which was weird because there was something almost familiar about the way his fingers sort of seemed to pluck the words out of the air. It was just so… bizarre. And the more he was around Dean, the way he looked at Dean and stayed close to him, Sam was just so damn jealous, and he didn't know why.

And shit got real, very real, and Sam wanted to die because Lucifer was after him and when Sam, joking, laughed and said in a voice that no human ever understood, "Why do you want me?" Lucifer smiled the warmest smile Sam had ever seen and said, "Because you're perfect, Sammy," and there it was again, that sort of Angel-Demon voice that bounced around his brain and cut him so deep he wanted to just let them tear him apart.

To tell the truth, no matter what happened, and with everything the brothers went through, Sam hated Dean because Dean didn't love Castiel no matter how much the Angel stood there begging to be loved, and Sam just wanted to know why he was good enough for the fucking devil, but not for this angel who didn't even seem to notice he was alive.

"Why?" Sam asked aloud in the room where only he and Castiel stood. Dean was off three doors down with the woman he'd picked up in the bar and Sam could see it was killing Castiel just a little. It wasn't fair, to either of them.

'Why, what?' Two simple signs, a y from the forehead and just a gentle shake of upturned palms. But it was the raised brows, the open expression and it told Sam that Castiel simply didn't understand how much pain he was in.

'Why Dean? Why him and not me?'

'Dean and I share a more profound bond,' Cas signed back, and he fingerspelled the words profound and bond to better make his point, but he didn't need to, because Sam got it and at least there was that. The answer, even if it hurt.

Then there was Gabriel, in that short little vessel of his with that really weird little smirk and those persistent hands that wouldn't keep off Sam _the moment_ he found out Sam swung that way. The way that Gabriel could make Sam grunt like an animal at any given moment, because Sam had this unique ability to see and feel the angel wings which were so familiar, achingly so, though he still didn't know why. And Gabriel would spend hours fingerspelling messages into Sam's hand as they lay there in the pitch blackness trying to find those little comforts in what might be the very end of days.

And then? He was gone. Just like that. He kissed him and signed, 'It's been great, kiddo, let's do this again sometime,' with the funny little sign he'd made up for the word kiddo, and then poof, that sort of pressure lifting in the room and he stopped coming around.

Things went to hell in a hand-basket after that. Literally. Sam came back and he didn't have a soul anymore, and things finally stopped hurting. He could remember the pain but oh god the blissful silence and he just didn't give a shit. What a wonderful life it was. But it wasn't enough for Dean and Dean just couldn't stop, and Sam pretended that he couldn't remember what it felt like to have his soul ripped from his body, and pretended that he couldn't remember that feeling of peace because he stopped feeling completely destroyed that Cas would never choose him.

And then Cas broke him. He didn't just break him a little, he fucking _destroyed_ him, the barrier he never wanted in the first place just melted down and it all came pouring in. He held it together for a little while, but then Lucifer showed up and it was just hell over and over again.

He was in the room, it wasn't even hell, it was just some random hotel room that Sam had probably stayed at once as a young kid when John was dragging them all over the goddamn country, and there was a bed and a little lamp covered by a filthy lampshade, and a small TV with wire rabbit ears poking out of the back playing blurry porn.

Lucifer was there, too, perched on top of the scrubbed wooden table perched below the window, and he had his legs crossed and his chin propped into his palms and he was smiling at Sam. "_Heeeeey_ there, Sammy," and there was that angel voice again, piercing the silence.

Sam opened his mouth to reply but nothing came out, no vibrations on his throat, which he reached up with his sensitive fingers to verify, and he looked at Lucifer, feeling almost offended. 'Why?'

Lucifer watched that sign, the y coming off the forehead with a perplexing fondness, his eyes softening. "Oh Sammy, oh my darling boy," he hopped off the table and began to circle Sam the way a cat would. "You've never realized it, but the way you talk with your hands is more beautiful, more magical, more musical than any voice that has ever existed on this earth. It would be a shame to rob this moment of that."

Sam watched Lucifer circle him and he had a brief moment where he just wanted those fallen angel's arms around him because even though it wasn't Castiel, and it wasn't even Gabriel, it was close enough. Lucifer still had wings, charred and blackened, but they were there.

'You told me once I was perfect,' Sam said, using his rudimentary skill of SEE to sign every word the way hearing people interpreted the written word.

"You are, Sammy. You are perfection," he punctuated that last word by kissing the tips of his fingers the way comical chefs did on television.

'Why? Why me?'

"Because you _are_, Sammy. You are just that. You are perfect."

Cas saved him, in the end. Cas came into that hospital and begged Sam's forgiveness and then he just took it all, and in a rush there were no more voices, no more pain, no more Lucifer.

Dean was there, looking absolutely petrified, like if he moved suddenly Sam would be gone and Dean would be alone again. And Cas was there, just lying on the bed, comatose and when Sam touched the center of Castiel's chest he felt the madness inside and he knew there was nothing they could do. Meg stood by and watched. Meg, the demon, who oozed a sort of fanatical beauty that even Sam, who was queer as a two-dollar bill, would have taken her given the chance.

She promised to watch over the angel as he suffered through whatever hell he had to in order to save Sam. So then suddenly he was in the impala with Dean and they were using half-signs so Dean could drive, but the relief Dean felt to have Sam back and safe again was almost tangible.

Sam realized that Dean had lived and died, and died and died and died for Sam, and Sam simply resented his big brother because Sam hadn't quite figured out the whole self-sacrifice thing yet, and that was probably why Castiel wanted Dean anyway. He hated himself a little bit for it and resolved to be a better brother, because Dean had always been there for him. My god, Sam wouldn't be alive it wasn't for that snarly bastard who lived to keep Sam safe.

It was after that moment, it had to be that moment, that Castiel finally came to Sam in the dead of night and unlocked that memory of when they were fifteen. Ironically they were in the same hotel they'd been in when Cas first visited the deaf boy, and touched his cheeks and told Sam what it was like to hear words.

'Your brother asked if I could heal you,' Cas signed, his voice still silent in Sam's head, but his fingers did a good enough job getting the point across.

'The madness?'

'The deafness.'

Sam felt a momentary anger because of all people, Dean never let Sam believe he was in any way different, or broken. But of course Dean didn't quite get it, what it was like to be deaf, that you could live this way perfectly fine because frankly he wasn't missing out on anything. He saw Dean's stupid faces when the older Winchester was singing along to that stupid 70's rock music and yeah, he wasn't missing much.

'I'm not broken,' Sam finally signed, thumping his finger on his own chest for emphasis so hard it actually hurt a little.

Cas gave the smallest smile and said, "I know," and then Sam heard that voice that unlocked those floodgates from so long ago. It was such a short moment, short memory, but had started this path to Cas from that moment fifteen years before. Oh god, he wanted the angel more than he'd ever wanted anything before.

Cas approached him and let Sam touch his wings, run his fingers through the feathers and across the tops, caressing the joints where the wings met his back, and Cas shivered because it felt damn good.

"Kiss me," Sam said sloppily, and Cas did. Dean was gone, so they did a lot more than kiss, and Sam realized why Cas had waited. There was still such a long road to walk, so much pain lay ahead of them, but it was okay now. Whatever was going to happen… it was okay now.


End file.
